Media Meltdowns
So our non-frog-resembling, perpetually indignant pal Buzz Bissinger has a piece in the New York Times today on Barry Bonds. It's a mostly-sympathetic look at the bloated slugger, at least as it pertains to his legal woes. So to recap: Will Leitch and sports blogs, bad. Barry Bonds, good. Thanks for taking us through the looking glass once again, Buzz.
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beijing olympics 2008
Out here in the West, the third and final part of the Bob Costas-Jacques Rogge tête-à-tête has just wrapped up on NBC. In this section (loosely labeled "Etcetera"), Costas asked Rogge what killed softball and baseball for the 2012 Games. Rogge eventually mentioned the domination of both sports by a few countries (*cough cough* America *cough*),
which Maggie Hendricks of Fourth Place Medal tore down yesterday. Before he did, though, he was sure to pick a proper villain. According to the head of the IOC, Barry Bonds killed softball.
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MLB
The Yankees aren't desperate enough to sign Barry Bonds — at least not yet — but they may have their goggles set on cornering the market on Molinas. With the trade deadline looming and missing sluggers Hideki Matsui and Jorge Posada, the Yankees are reportedly interested in acquiring Giants' catcher Bengie Molina, who would join brother Jose to form the majors' only all-Molina catching corps. Then if they could only reel in the third brother,
Yadier Molina, they'd have The Fifth Element and could finally rule the universe.
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DUAN!
Dan Patrick's radio show this afternoon was very Bonds branded-ball heavy,
grabbing baseball HOF president Jeff Idelson on for a few minutes to talk about how they finally wrestled the piece of history away from Marc Ecko. Lucky for them, the HOF was kind enough to send them a picture of the infamous branded hide that once was Barry Bonds' 756th homerun ball in all of its tainted glory.
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Barry Bonds
The debate over Barry Bonds' Hall Of Fame induction is still a couple years away, but at least Major League Baseball can finally lay claim to the large-headed slugger's historic, controversial home run ball for posterity. Designer Marc Ecko paid a whopping $752,467 for the ball at an auction last September, branded it with an asterisk in a show of artsy-fartsy protest, and then held it hostage from the Hall to continue his bratty little stand-off.
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revisionist history
Ken Griffey Jr. wasn't able to hit his 600th homer yesterday, depriving the Great American Ballpark fans from the opportunity to see the milestone. (And then see Griffey get traded.) The Reds now take off on an eight-game road trip, and you'd have to think Griffey's gonna hit at least one over those eight games. And that would make him the fourth ever player to hit 600 homers. Wait ... fourth? Well,
according to MLB, yep.
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hey, it's a living
Barry Bonds may be gone, but as penance for profiting over his steroid-soaked home run record chase, I think the Giants should have to dump Lou Seal and adopt a new mascot. Meet Petey P. Cup, who not only charms young and old with his playful urine-related antics, but serves as a sober reminder of baseball's unwillingness to face its issues with performance enhancing drugs. Careful kids, you don't want to tip Petey over! (Trust me).
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steroid heroes
One reason that no team wants to take a chance on signing Barry Bonds: The perjury counts from his BALCO grand jury testimony seem to be splitting like amoebas. On Monday he had four counts of perjury, and
on Tuesday it suddenly became 14. As any biology teacher will tell you, that's reproduction by binary fission ... who knows where it will end? By June there could be millions of counts, and perhaps a new mammal species.
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steroid heroes
Since Roger Clemens has taken center stage as the poster doughboy for steroid use in baseball, Barry Bonds has quietly faded into the background. There will be an update on his perjury charges here, a question about why no MLB team is courting him there, but, for the most part, all of the shrieking Bonds ire has dissipated.
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